Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [105]
After obtaining the entry code from the caretaker, they had already been inside the building and listened at the door with the nameplate SALANDER-WU. They had heard no sound from the apartment, and nobody had answered the bell. They returned to their car and parked where they could keep watch on the door.
From the car they had ascertained by phone that the person in Stockholm whose name had been recently added to the contract for the apartment on Lundagatan was Miriam Wu, born in 1974 and previously living at St. Eriksplan.
They had a passport photograph of Salander taped above the car radio. Faste muttered out loud that she looked like a bitch.
“Shit, the whores are looking worse all the time. You’d have to be pretty desperate to pick her up.”
Andersson kept his mouth shut.
At 4:20 they were called by Bublanski, who told them he was on his way from Armansky’s to the Millennium offices. He asked Faste and Andersson to maintain their watch at Lundagatan. Salander would have to be brought in for questioning, but they should be aware that the prosecutor did not think she could be linked to the killings in Enskede.
“All right,” Faste said. “According to Bubble the prosecutor wants to have a confession before they arrest anybody.”
Andersson said nothing. Listlessly they watched people moving through the neighbourhood.
At 4:40, Prosecutor Ekström called Faste’s mobile.
“Things are happening. We found Bjurman shot in his apartment. He’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours.”
Faste sat up in his seat. “Got it. What should we do?”
“I’m going to issue an alert on Salander. She’s being sought as a suspect in three murders. We’ll send it out county-wide. We have to consider her dangerous and very possibly armed.”
“Got it.”
“I’m sending a van to Lundagatan. They’ll go in and secure the apartment.”
“Understood.”
“Have you been in touch with Bublanski?”
“He’s at Millennium.”
“And seems to have turned off his phone. Could you try to reach him and let him know?”
Faste and Andersson looked at each other.
“The question is, what do we do if she turns up?” Andersson said.
“If she’s alone and things look good, we’ll pick her up. This girl is as crazy as hell and obviously on a killing spree. There may be more weapons in the apartment.”
Blomkvist was dead tired when he laid the pile of manuscript pages on Berger’s desk and slumped into the chair by the window overlooking Götgatan. He had spent the whole afternoon trying to make up his mind what they ought to do with Svensson’s unfinished book.
Svensson had been dead only a few hours, and already his publisher was debating what to do with the work he had left behind. An outsider might think it cynical and coldhearted, but Blomkvist did not see it that way. He felt as if he were in an almost weightless state. It was a sensation that every reporter or newspaper editor knew well, and it kicked in at moments of direst crisis.
When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient. And despite the numbing shock that afflicted the members of the Millennium team who were there that Maundy Thursday morning, professionalism took over and was rigorously channelled into work.
For Blomkvist this went without saying. He and Svensson were two of a kind, and Svensson would have done the same himself if their roles had been reversed. He would have asked himself what he could do for Blomkvist. Svensson had left a legacy in the form of a manuscript with an explosive story. He had worked on it for four years; he had put his soul into a task which he would now never complete.
And he had chosen to work at Millennium.
The murders of Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson were not a national trauma on the scale of the murder of Olof Palme, and the investigation would not be minutely followed by a grieving nation. But for employees of Millennium the shock was perhaps greater—they were affected personally—and Svensson had a broad network of contacts in the media who were going to demand answers to their questions.
But now it was Blomkvist